He had two bad days. There were moments when he did not know where he was or why, or, sometimes, just who he was.
He sometimes felt his life was managed by guardian devils. The Fates pursued him like indefatigable hounds, with malice their only joy.
The ship dropped hyper without warning. "Are we finally there?" he asked the air. He stepped into the corridor. Most of the landsmen were there.
Jarl Kindervoort's voice filled the ship. ‘Passengers, remain in your quarters. Strap in for acceleration. We're about to engage a Confederation squadron that has been following us."
"Engage?" Moyshe said. "What the hell? Mouse? What's going on? Jupp's not supposed to move for two weeks yet."
Mouse shook his head warningly. People were listening. The Sangaree woman appeared to be in a black rage.
"Wheels within wheels," benRabi whispered. "Beckhart's doing it to us."
"Let's hope we didn't suddenly get expendable," Mouse'said. "What's going on?"
"Oh, damn! I figured you knew. Beckhart? Maybe Jupp thought he saw a chance? Maybe that frontier thing broke?"
"What? That's bullshit. The Ulantonids know better. It's the Old Man. Got to be."
"Better strap in. Say any prayers you know." BenRabi had seen several battles while in the line. They had ruined his taste for space warfare. Defeats were too total and final.
The vessel shuddered while he was strapping in. He recognized a heavy missile salvo departing. The ship clearly mounted weaponry not customary for her class.
Would the nasty surprises never end?
For a few seconds his mind fell apart completely, into absolute chaos. A tiny part of him seemed to be outside, watching the disorder.
All-clear bells and his door buzzer sounding bracketed the reassembly process.
A crewman stepped into his cabin. "Mr. benRabi? Will you come with us, please?"
He was as polite as the spider inviting the fly.
There was going to be trouble.
A half-dozen people wearing guns backed him. BenRabi joined them in the passageway.
Another group had collected a stoic Mouse.
How had they blown it?
Kindervoort was directing the pickup himself. He looked like a man with a compulsion to explain. And to ask. Moyshe hoped he would not get primitive.
Mouse seemed to fear that. But hatchetmen lived by the Old Testament: eye for an eye, live by the sword...
"Got you, boys." Kindervoort grinned toothily. He had an overbite.
BenRabi had an irrational aversion to the man. It had nothing to do with the situation. More like loathing at first sight.
Kindervoort had a colorless, fleshless face. His skin lay stretched drumhead tight over prominent cheekbones and a lantern jaw. Shadowed hollows lay between. He achieved a deathshead look when the light was wrong.
BenRabi automatically disliked anyone with that gaunt, graveyard look.
"Ah, here you are," said the Ship's Commander as they shuffled into his darkly decorated office.
The furniture was of mahogany-toned imitation woods crafted in antique styles. The walls and ceiling had been artificially timbered to suggest the captain's cabin of a sailing ship. There were reproductions of antique ship's lanterns, a compass, a sextant, a chart of Henry the Navigator, framed prints featuring caravels, clippers, and the frigate Constellation. "Any trouble, Jarl?"
"No sir. The Bureau doesn't employ fanatics. May I present Commanders Masato Igarashi Storm and Thomas Aquinas McClennon, of Confederation Navy? They're senior field agents of the Bureau of Naval Intelligence. Commanders, Ship's Commander Eduard Chouteau."
BenRabi pursed his lips. He had been afraid Mouse's real name might be Storm. Mouse had been conspicuously absent from Academy during their final year of school. That had been the year of the Storm-Hawksblood war in the Shadowline.
Moyshe had visited Blackworld after that war's end. There had been a Masato Igarashi Storm there at the time, but their paths had not crossed. That Masato had taken command of his father's mercenaries after Sangaree treachery had killed his father, brothers, and most of the family officers.
Kindervoort certainly had him pat, though the name McClennon seemed like a stranger's, like that of someone he had known a long time ago, in an age of innocence.
He felt less like Thomas Aquinas McClennon than he did Moyshe benRabi, Gundaker Niven, Eric Earl Hollenkamp, Walter Clark, or... How many men had he been?
"Take seats, gentlemen," Chouteau said. "And relax."
BenRabi dropped into a chair, glanced at his partner, Mouse, who also seemed stunned. The simple knowing of a secret name bore so many implications... The spookiest was that someone might have penetrated the Bureau deep enough to have gained access to its primary data system. That meant a mole of a generation's standing.
"Worrying about your Navy friends?" Kindervoort asked. "Don't. They're all right. They cut and ran. And I mean fast. Guess they figured there wasn't any point to a slugfest when they couldn't gain anything even if they won." He chuckled. So did Chouteau.
Had to be a deep mole. Nothing else would explain their perpetual success at evading Confederation.
Kindervoort planted himself in front of benRabi. He leaned close, frowning. Moyshe avoided his deathshead face by staring at Chouteau.
The Ship's Commander leaned back in his fat, comfortable chair and half closed his eyes.
Kindervoort said, "But we're not worried about von Drachau or Admiral Beckhart, are we?" He chuckled, again, moved to Mouse. "Why we wanted to see you was these tracers you've got built in. Walking instels they inflict on us. Ingenious."
They did have a mole.
Moyshe had thought he was the only human instel. Beckhart had pissed and moaned like the expense of it was coming out of his own pocket. Redundancy had not seemed plausible after that.
He hadn't really wondered why Mouse was along. Beckhart had issued an assignment. Nobody questioned the Old Man. Not in any way that might look like contradicting his will.
Mouse looked like death warmed over. Swell. It would do him good to get short-sheeted sometimes too.
How come Mouse had not been hurting?
Knowing Beckhart, the Pyschs had programed the headaches. Maybe to divert attention from Mouse. Had Mouse known?
They had some talking to do.
Beckhart clockwork, jerking along, often was oiled by the confusion of its parts. Only the master knew all the secrets of his machinery.
Would there be more?
Silly question.
Beckhart's nature semed to demand twists on twists and gaudy smoke screens that concealed truths as slippery as greased snakes. His plots, however, while labyrinthine, had their own tightness and logic. They were mapped by the finest computers in Luna Command. He ran simulation models against even the most ridiculous contingencies.
Had Beckhart calculated a mole into this scheme?
BenRabi suddenly intuited that he and Mouse were not partners after all. This time they were voyagers sailing parallel but distinct courses. They had been programed to hide from one another as much as from their targets. And they had been intended for exposure from the beginning.
Beckhart knew about the mole.
He wanted them taken captive. He wanted them to spend a year in Seiner service.
Moyshe got mad. That was a year stolen from his life!
"The thing's all biological, eh?" Kindervoort asked.
"What?"
"This instel. Remarkable gimmick. Our detectors didn't quiver when you came aboard. 'Course, that didn't matter in the long run."
He was smug, damn him. So was Chouteau, chubby-happy there in his plastic-antique, made for the Archaicist trade captain's chair.
"How the hell did you get my name?" benRabi demanded. They were in the mood for talking. They might give him something the computers could use to pinpoint the mole.
Kindervoort ignored his question.